Some aspects of American culture and society in the twentieth and twenty-First centuries through a number of selected short literary works

some time devoted herself for her new family, realized that she had missed a life of her own. “…she missed going to work. She missed going to dances. She missed putting on her camisoles and beaded chiffon dresses and feeling goose bumps in the cold.” (McNeal, as cited in Miller & Kenison, 2002, p. 214) Her ego had risen up. She started to hate housework, cooking for her husband, listening to his “cowboy tales”. However, the hardship of her marriage life, and the responsibilities with her new-born baby daughter Edna Arlene, had carried her ego away until that watermelon day. She heard the music. Yet, the music in the distance pulled her toward the festivities. She was stimulated by the music. She was so excited. She was drawn to the pavement dance, ignoring the sack races, the seed-spitting contests and the free watermelon. “Doreen positioned herself among the encircling fringe of onlookers and after a while stepped onto the pavement and pulled Edna Arlene out with her, trying by her own example to coax the girl into dancing…” (McNeal, as cited in Kenison and Miller, 2002, p. 219) Nevertheless, she could not do what she wanted because her daughter was too frightened. But when the handsome dancer fixed his gaze upon her, she became bewildered. A mixture of feeling slipped into her. She did not know whether she hoped the man to ask her to dance or wanted the man not to do it. “As he moved nearer, Edna Arlene’s grip on Doreen’s leg began to tighten and Doreen herself was overcome with something that seemed equal parts panic and exhilaration.” (2002, p. 220) Doreen should have been really exhilarated but for the tightening of her daughter’s grip which tightened her leg, or, as it can be inferred, the tightening of responsibilities to the exposure of herself. She could not expose herself to what she had used enjoyed and craved. Her wandering away from her daughter later revealed her desire to get rid of responsibilities for some moments for her own. Her ego came back again when, instead of going home to fulfill her stomach, Doreen alone went to Wilkemeyer’s pub, sitting herself on the same booth which she had seated long time ago when she and her husband spoke to each other for the first time. After ordering her drinks, she printed her maiden name DOREEN SULLIVAN on the napkin and cried when she found the words she saw odd to herself. She cried because of desperation to realize that she had missed herself, the haughty woman she had used to be. However, her desperation did not take her away. She remembered she had left her daughter for so long at the watermelon festivities. She returned to take her home. She had to come back on earth again. She could not forget the reality that she had a husband, a daughter and another baby to expect. By the end of the story, Doreen went out to the river alone. The image of her standing with her hands folded below the waist and her back straight in the illumination of a lamp fixed to the underside of the bridge over the river revealed an enlightenment that came to her. “…she could sense a stillness coming over the camps, and feel herself pulling imaginations up out of darkness.” (2002, p. 228). She had found peace inside herself and that imaginations had not left her. She had not lost her ego. Her spirits were improved so that she could came back home and enjoyed her husband singing as she used to do in the first weeks of their marriage. It is undeniable that Tom McNeal did a great job when describing the conflicts inside his woman. Such sophisticated descriptions help to indicate a sensitive and strong headed American woman like many other women in the difficult time of the early twentieth century. Up to the twenty-first century, such motif of an American woman has been developed in literature. Though with some differences due to new social circumstances, readers still feel their modernity, their strong identity and their desire for happiness. Like in the short story Shiloh by Bobbie Ann Mason, from the beginning of the story, we could see an image of a modern woman, very strong and energetic lifting “three-pound dumpbells to warm up, then progresses to a twenty-pound barbell.” (Mason, as cited in DiYanni, 2004, p. 62) She is Norma Jean, the wife of Leroy Mofit’s who had injured his leg in a highway accident when he was a truck driver. Norma Jean had a job at a cosmetic counter, therefore she knew all about make-up and was well aware of keeping fit by her daily exercises with weight-liftings. She was an active and energetic woman who enjoyed working and studying. After work, she used to come home and prepared dinner for her husband. Nowadays, she took up a six-week body-building course, after which she took an adult – education course. She herself found a list of jobs for her husband to choose from. When her husband refused to do any jobs where he had to stand up all day, she did not give up but encouraged him while doing her usual exercise: “you ought to try standing up all day behind a cosmetic counter. It’s amazing that I have strong feet, coming from two parents that never had strong feet at all.” (as cited in DiYanni, 2004, p. 65). She is a practical-minded woman as she never approved of her husband plan to build a log house for their own. She called a log house “a log cabin” and did not even care about it no matter her husband tried to persuade her. She is an independent woman because she often got crazy when her mother told her to do this and not to do that and especially, when she told her to go to Shiloh, an Civil War battleground in Tennessee where her parents used to spend their honeymoon, which she did not want to. She even cried and felt disapproved when her mother caught her smoking and shouted at her as if she was eighteen. And it was her to take the initiative to say good-bye to her husband after she agreed to go to Shiloh with him and her mother. The story ended with Norma Jeans standing by Tennessee River waving her arms toward Leroy as if she was doing her chest muscle exercise. She waved her arm or, as inference can be drawn, she waved goodbye to her past which had been made up of a gap between her and her husband. II.2.4. Generation gaps Regarding generation gap, it is no doubt that the gap is broad when the social circumstances which shape the characteristics of each generation differ greatly from each other. Let take an example of Julian and his mother in the short story Everything That Rises Must Converge written in 1950 by Flannery O’ Connor. Although Julian’s mother, a working widow “… had struggled fiercely to feed and clothe and put him through school and … was supporting him still…until he got on his feet.” (O’Connor, as cited in Yanni, 2004, p. 209), Julian did not have anything in common with her. Any of her points of view or behaviors was an eyesore and a disturbance to him. As when he felt his own sacrifice for her to take her to the reducing class every Wednesday night on the bus which helped his mother with her high blood pressure by losing weight, “Julian walked with his hand in his pockets, his head down and thrust forward and his eyes glazed with the determination to make himself completely numb during the time he would be sacrificed to her pleasure.” (as cited in Yanni, 2004, p. 209). He called her intention of keeping herself fit a joke. He felt compelled to take her there and, most of all, he felt ashamed to go with such “dumpy figure”. Additionally, his annoyance was one more time made worse when he saw his mother standing in front of the mirror watching her new hat murmuring that she should have returned it the next day because it cost her seven dollars and a half, a great amount of money she had never spent on a hat in her life. ““Maybe I shouldn’t have paid for it. No, I shouldn’t have. I’ll take it off and return it tomorrow. I shouldn’t have bought it. “She lifted the hat one more time and set it down slowly on top of her head.” (as cited in Yanni, 2004, p. 209) Julian did not cheer her up, instead, he thought of her hat as “comical”, “jaunty” and “pathetic” without considering how much she interested in it. For him, “everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed him.” (as cited in Yanni, 2004, p. 209) He could never understand the joy of a devoting mother who had worked hard all her life and saved every penny for her son and now, she could be able to buy something for herself. Julian could never understand that it was the first time in her life a woman watched herself with such a beautiful hat. He could not understand his mother because he, who had been out of school for a year, grew up in the sacrifice of his mother for his comfort and his “first-rate education”. He grew up in an affluent society as the year 1950 when the story was written was the prime time of American prosperity between 1945 and 1960. Therefore, he could not imagine how an over-fifty woman, who had survived from the most difficult times of her country, the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl era when unemployment reached to 80% and “an increasing number of families were turning to state and local public relief system, just to be able to eat.” (Brinkley, 2000, p. 739), would feel unfamiliar to enjoy such little happiness. That is why he treated his mother as a complete stranger throughout the story. And for many times he tried to declare wars on her. The first war on their journey broke out when his mother found him in a very bad mood taking her to the reducing class. She wanted to go home so as not to bother him. And at this point, he said extremely irritatedly: “True culture is in the mind, the mind.” But his mother did not approve: “It’s in the heart…and in how you do things and how you do things is because of who you are.” Julian thought the knowledge he had learnt from college was enough and his mother, who had not had chances to enjoy such good education like him, was just narrow-minded. And he decided to teach her a lesson. That was when the second war began. As mentioned at the very beginning of the story, Julian’s mother was afraid to go on a bus by herself at night because they were integrated. She could not stand it when sitting next to a Negro. That was her weak point which Julian took advantage of. He tried to make acquaintance or attract the attention of any Negro who got on the bus like he used to do to make friends with any Negroes who looked like professors, ministers or lawyers, although he often failed to do so. What he did had only one effect, that was to make his mother’s blood pressure rise high. It is a common knowledge that up to the year 1950, the African American had not gained equal rights. The colored people still suffered segregation in public places. And Julian’s mother had been used to such unequal practice since she was born. While Julian, who had enjoyed the “first-rate education” and whose “mind” had been enlightened, was supposed to treat the Negroes differently from his mother. It is ironic that Julian had been well-educated but he did not respect his mother as an educated often does even though he had watched her secretly many times. He wanted to become a writer but actually, he was selling typewriter. He wished to make money so that he would not have to wonder whether to wear a seven-dollar-and–a-half- hat or to return it to the store, but he knew he never would. He had tried many times to make friends with the Negroes who he supposed to be intellectual but the stimulation was not that he liked them but because he wanted to make a revenge against his mother. If only he had been a real intellectual, he would have put himself into her position, therefore, the gap between them would not have been so big. Flannery O’Connor is such a skillful writer in exploiting different facets of generation gap, often among people of flesh and blood relationship. In another short story written by her in 1955 “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.”, the conflicts among the three generations are not as extreme as in the previous work “Everything That Rises Must Converge.”, however, the differences in the behaviors and attitudes of the grandmother, the father and the mother and the children at least cause discontent to one another. The grandmother held the floor most of the time from the beginning of the story in her decision where to go, in her introduction of the scenery along the journey. While the father, the mother and the children enjoyed going to Florida, “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of the connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing every chance to change Bailey’s mind.” (as cited in Yanni, 2004, p. 198). (Baily was her only son whose family she lived with.). The idea she put forward was that from the newspaper she was reading the criminal called the Misfits headed toward Florida. ““Now look here, Bailey.” She said, “see here, read this, “ and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head.” (as cited in Yanni, 2004, p. 198). From her language and gestures, the grandmother exposed herself as the superior in the family. She was the one to make decisions and the others were her inferiors, therefore, they had no choice but to obey her. And they did although their reactions did not reveal their agreement. Bailey didn’t look up or nodded his head or said anything. His wife, the mother of the children “whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage…” didn’t seem to hear or actually, she ignored to hear that. Throughout the story, we do not see any of her involvements into any conversations with the grandmother. Regarding the children, they disapproved of the decision of their grandmother but, as the youngest in the family, their reaction did come to no where. Finally, it was the grandmother to be the first in the car the next morning, ready to go. One more time we come across a silent but apparent conflict between the two generations, the grandmother and her son and her daughter-in-law. They do not share much in common. However they respect the hierarchy of the family in order to keep peace among family members. Two main factors that make up the gaps among the three generation in this story, they are the different experience and different interests of the members. Like the mother, she had lived all her life so she made traveling a chance to revisit her past. That was the reason why she really wanted to go to east Tennessee instead of Florida. That was also the reason why she was so excited to show the children the sightseeing along the road. She wanted them to broad their mind and, most of all, she wanted them to gain experience of what she had experienced. Nonetheless, out of her expectation, the children and their parents did not get interested. While the grandmother tried to point out the “interesting details of the scenery” with “Stone Mountain” as a blue granite, “the brilliant red clay banks slightly streaked with purple”, “the various crops that made rows of green-lace work on the ground”, the children read their comic books and their mother went back to sleep. No one cared about her and shared her interest. The grandmother was interested in the scenery and the people along the road because she, a woman whose experience of life had remained in “her thin veined fingers” had had some memory with the sights and the people and in her time, she had learnt to respect their native states and their parents and everything else. On the contrary, her children and grand children did not learn such things, especially for the children. The sightseeings were unfamiliar to them and they had learnt only about their negative aspects such as “Tennessee is just a dumping ground …and Georgia is a lousy state.” Such negative ideas of the children disappointed their grandmother “If I were a little boy…I wouldn’t talk about my native states that way. Tennessee has the mountains and Georgia has the hills.” (as cited in Yanni, 2004, p. 199) The grandmother had experienced both the hardest time such as the time of the Civil War, the Great Depression, the World War II and the prime time of the nation, the affluent America in the 1920s, the late 1940s, and the early 1950s. She was very conscious of the value of what she had and what the country offered. However, her son, his wife and especially her grandchildren did not share such common knowledge and experience which helped to narrow the gap. Similar conflicts are also revealed in the short story “Shiloh” by Bobbie Ann Mason discussed in the previous part. Norma Jeans’s mother, Mabel Beasly was a caring mother who took care of her daughter very carefully, even when her daughter had been married, for which Norma did not seem to be grateful. She treated her like a little daughter as she saw her smoking, which resented Norma and, according to her, what her mother had done was apparently a revenge against her and her husband for they had not been able to save their four and a half month baby from infant death. For the past few years, Mabel had always been urging her daughter and her husband Leroyd to visit Shiloh, the Civil War battle ground in Tennessee where she and her husband used to spend their honeymoon, with which her daughter felt extremely annoyed whenever she started. At first Norma’s reaction to her mother’s suggestion to go to Shiloh was just in the form of an impatient response like “One of these days, Mama.“ (as cited in Yanni. R, 2004, p. 65). But, eventually, it became a terrible annoyance indicated in her response “When are you going to shut up about Shiloh, Mama?” (as cited in Yanni, 2004, p. 69) Unlike Julian, who did not want to take his mother to the reducing class but finally, he still did it, and unlike Bailey, his wife and his children, who after all followed the grandmother to east Tennessee even though they did not feel like it, Norma Jean did not agree to go to Shiloh for the sake of her mother. She decided to go there for her own sake to end her marriage where her parents’ marriage started. As the evidences suggest, Norma Jean was a very independent woman who did things in her own way. She did not enjoy being treated as a child. She did not feel like being told what to do, even by her mother. What she did was typical of the “Me! Me! Me! Generation of the 1980s” when the story was written. During this era, the young people respected their “self” images. They lived their own lives and did what they thought to be right. Most of all, they seeked their status in the society, keeping in mind the examples of their billionaire idols such as Donald Trump, Leona Helmsley, and Ivan Boesky. For Norma, whatever arguments she had with her mother or husband, she kept on doing her physical exercises. She knew how to look after herself and to value herself like the other young people of her generation. She had a casual treatment with sex which resulted in her pregnancy before marriage. For the young generation of the 1980s in the United States, her practice seemed widely acceptable. Nevertheless, this casualty was a disgrace to her mother. Mabel never forgave her daughter and her husband for that. The ending of the story that Norma and her husband splitted up in Shiloh was the beginning of another war, the war between Norma Jean and her mother. It is undeniable that, the more modern and independent the young generation become, the greater the gap they create between themselves and the older generation since the two generations live at different time and they respect different values. II.2.5. Individualism One of the most typical aspects of American culture and society is individualism. From the early time of their lives, American children are trained to be independent and considered themselves as individuals who take responsibility of their own problems or situations. They are not supposed to depend on their parents on any of their “close-knit”, groups or their nation. Let consider the practice of individualism of the young boy called Dave in the short story Split Cherry Tree written by Jesse Stuart (retrieved on Nov 9, 2008 from The story takes place in the rural America at the beginning of the 1940s when the United States were dominated by World War II and life, especially in rural areas, was very hard. Dave was born into a farming family whose members work hard from four o’clock in the morning to supper time at night except himself, who only worked after school with “Seven cows to milk. Nineteen head of cattle to feed, four mules, twenty-five hogs, firewood and stovewood to cut, and water to draw from the well.” Dave was the first of his people to study at high school. He understood the hardship his father had to overcome to send him to school. That was why he insisted his teacher, Professor Herbert, to punish by whipping him with a witch in return for one dollar fine Herbert had paid for his participation in breaking a cherry tree with other five students during their biology field lesson. Dave did not mind the punishment not only because he was so terrified of being whipped by his father for coming two hours late (Professor Herbert finally accepted that he stayed two hours after school to work out his fine by sweeping the schoolhouse floor, washing the blackboards and cleaning the windows.), but also because he was a brave boy who was aware of his responsibility for his own mistakes. The split cherry tree was his fault so it was not his father to pay for that. It was his father who sacrificed to send him to high school so it was not fair to bother him with such fine. Dave acknowledged everything that Pa had done for his brighter future, therefore, he tried to do all the work with great effort to satisfy his father. Dave was really a responsible boy who had no intention of relying on his parents at a very young age, in such a difficult time of his family. Another variation of individualism is indicated in the short story The First Seven Years by Bernard Malamud. The story takes place in the prosperous time of American history in the 1950s when the World War II had ended and the Baby boom was “in full swing”. Like Dave’s father and many other parents of his time, Feld, a shoe maker believed that education could help improve the life of one person. Then, he begged his daughter Miriam to go to college, raising her awareness that many parents of the time could not afford to send their children to college. However, his daughter did not mind his idea. She wanted to be independent and to find a job. Her decision grieved her father but he had to respect her choice. And the father had to respect the choice of his daughter once again when she denied the boy her father had tempted to match with her. At first Miriam respected the intention of her father to have an appointment with the boy, who was a college student. Unexpectedly, her realization that he was “nothing more than a materialist” who “had no soul” was made used for her getting rid of him. She did not pay any more attention to the boy. It was Miriam herself to decide her own life. Her father, although he was “deeply hurt”, he did not argue with her. He respected the decision of his daughter. He had never imposed anything upon her. Like when the idea to make Miriam and the boy a couple arouse, and after they had met once, he was so embarrassed to talk to his daughter about the boy. “Often he was tempted to talk to Mirriam about the boy, to ask whether she thought she would like his type – he had told her only that he considered Max a nice boy and had suggested he call her…” (Malamud, as cited in Kinsella. et al, 2005, p. 992) The embarrassment of the father, indicated in the way he cleared his throat whenever he concerned her of the matter, was due to his fear of hurting his independent daughter. He desired to do something good for her future but he only wanted to play the role of a guide who made suggestions because her life was her own. He treated her as an independent individual. Although the two stories were written long time ago but the practice of individualism conveyed in them is still shared with that in the recent literary work. Let consider the example of a fourteen- year-old girl in the short story First Four Measures by Nathaniel Bellows collected in The Best American Short Story 2005. The impression that the girl leaves in me when I read the story is that she behaves more maturely than her age. As a fourteen-year-old-girl, she did not want her parents to hire somebody to look after her while they were away from home for a month. When Mrs. Spencer, the woman her parents wanted came, the girl did not want her to take her to school in her car but she took the bus by herself. As a fourteen-year-old-girl, she was aware of her own abilities, blaming her old piano teacher for always having her “play pieces that were slightly below” what she thought she could play. Another evidence of her individualism is indicated in the way she coped with the strange behavior of her new piano teacher who tried to touch her in every lesson. The girl felt strange and managed to avoid his touching. However, she did not tell the story to anyone, even her parents until they were told by Mrs. Spencer since she had witnessed what the piano teacher had done to their daughter. To the surprise of the parents, she was not bewildered but, instead she answered them firmly: “It’s an issue of perspective…and scale.” (Bellows, as cited in Chabon & Kenison, 2005, p. 122) This is her imitation of the way her parents often judge a thing. The answer revealed that she always tried to show herself as more mature than her age. She did not want her parents to get involved in such, for her it was perhaps, a nonsense matter. And it was the girl herself solved her own problem for she had decided not to come back to the piano class. Mrs. Spencer insisted that the girl let her speak to the teacher because she really wanted to do something for her. Nonetheless, the girl had made up her mind to do that as she emphasized: “I’ll do it by myself.” (Bellows, as cited in Chabon & Kenison, 2005, p. 124) Like Dave in Split Cherry Tree, the girl was well aware of her responsibility for her own situations and like Mirriam in The First Seven Years, she wanted to be treated as a mature individual who could look after herself and solve her own problem. As Doctor Spock appealed in his book Baby and Child Care “In the United States…very few children are raised to believe that their principal destiny is to serve their family, their country or their God…Generally children [in the United States] are given the feeling that they can set their own aims and occupation in life, according to their own inclinations. We are raising them to be rugged individuals…) (Spock, as cited in Althen, Doran & Szmania, 2003, p. 7) This practice can be seen apparently in a very well-known “student-centered” teaching approach of American education which activates the competence of every individual student in their learning process. Additionally, the students participate in self-assessment activities through which each student himself can evaluate his own achievement. This approach of teaching and learning is illustrated in the short story Accomplice by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum. The protagonist, Ms. Hempel, a secondary-school-teacher of English pondered upon an idea whether to let the students to write their own anecdotals about themselves and their study to their parents with her remarks. Through this assignment, she hoped that her students “could give voice to their own visions of themselves, visions that might differ from those held by their teachers, parents or friends.” and that they would be able to “identify and celebrate what they see as their greatest strength. During this crucial stage of their development, kids need…to articulate what they believe themselves capable of.” (Bynum, as cited in Morre, 2004, p. 71). The students would, therefore, discover themselves and be highly responsible for their own study. In such an individualistic culture like the United States, competition is a common practice. There is fight for jobs and for personal wealth. Everyone tries their best to support their self-image by studying hard and working hard. Such effort is described through many characters in short stories such as Dave, the boy in the short story Split Cherry Tree set in rural America in 1940, whose parents worked from four o’clock in the morning until night in order to able to send their son, as the first person among their people, to high school. Another example is Julian in Everything That Rises Must Converge written in 1950, who had first-rate education thanks to his devoted mother who pondered very much on buying a hat at one dollar and a half for herself. Not only the male had the ambition to study but the married woman in Shiloh named Norma Jean also devoted herself to study. After a whole day standing at the cosmetic counter, she spent the night on an adult-education course in composition at Paducah Community College and did not mind staying up late to write composition. In recent literary works, many motifs of characters to represent the talented and diligent American, who crave for success in life, have been created by many authors including Jhumpa Lahiri with her world of intellectuals in the short story Nobody’s Business, first published in 2001. Such world has Paul, who worked as a teacher at a graduate school in Boston with his Ph.D from Harvard on literature and was studying for another important exam; Sang, who dropped out of Harvard for her doctorate and was working part-time at a bookstore; Sang’s boyfriend, Farouk, an Egyptian American who was teaching Middle Eastern history at Harvard; Heather, the housemate of Sang and Paul, who was a law student at Boston college and her boyfriend, Kevin was working as a physicist at MIT (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology). These young people, though have different ways of life, share the same serious attitude to their study. It is no doubt that such attitude is resulted from their desire for a high position in the society. Even for the talented fourteen-year-old girl in The First Four Measures by Nathaniel Bellows discussed above, in addition to her study at school, she had a passion for piano. She was well aware of her ability for piano and practiced very hard to master the more challenging pieces firstly with the first four measures with one hand, then with both hands on the same four measures and finally, she could go through the challenging pieces without much difficulty with both hands on all eight measures. Such evidence of great efforts made by a young girl represents the ambition of the young American to achieve success in life and to prove their own talent and abilities as an individual in such society of competition. II.2.6. The American in turbulent ages “Stop it this minute, he says. Oink oink, says the little girl. What’d you say? Oink oink, she says. The young father says What! Three times. Then he seized the child, raised her high above his head, and sets her hard on his feet…Just hold my hands, screams the frail and angry father.” (Paley. G, as cited in Kinsella. et al, 2005, p. 832-833) Why did the young father get so angry? Was that because the child wiggled too much or because of other reasons? The questions were put forward by an old lady who had been watching the man and the other fathers picking up their children from the school through the glass window of her marigold greenhouse garden. The woman, before raising her questions to the father, was so anxious, leaning herself far out of the window crying Stop! Stop! Why was the woman so anxious seeing a strange man getting crazy with his little daughter? As this story, Anxiety by Grace Paley takes place during the 1950s, one of the most turbulent period of American history, the answers given later in the story do not require much efforts to be understood. When the woman approached the father leaning “two, three dangerous inches toward him”, she explained about her anxious involvement that “… madmen intend to destroy this beautifully made planet. That the murder of our children by these men has got to become a terror and a sorrow to you, and starting now. It had better interfere with any daily pleasure.” (Paley. G, as cited in Kinsella. et al., 2005, p. 833) Who and what did Paley refer to by “madmen”, “murder”, “terror” and “sorrow”? The evidences can be traced back to the 1940s and 1950s era which held numerous events that brought about great anxiety for the entire nation. The beginning of the 1940s was marked by the assault of the Japanese on Pearl Habour in 1941 which led to several nuclear bomb schemes and experiments in the United States in preparation for the revenge of the United States by exploding two destructive atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The death of between 130,000 and 200,000 people including the injured and disappeared in the bombings over Japan, (Turnbull. S & Holmes. R, retrieved on Feb 4, 2009 from followed by the killing of 6 millions Jews by the Nazis and the aftermath of World War II with approximately 60 million people worldwide lost their life, (Graebner. W & Swansinger. J, 1997, p. 2) made up the excessive pervasive anxiety of all Americans. There were many factors linked to the fear of the American but most of all, it was the fear for nuclear warfare mounted by the threatening of the Soviet Union and the communist regimes during the Cold War time from the mid-1940s to 1960s. The “madmen” referred in the story implied the authority, those who started the wars, which caused the death of millions of American people that Paley called “the murder of our children”. Such murders had caused a terror and sorrow in the frail father, whose consequence was an obsession in the father whenever he heard the sound “oink, oink”, which reminded him of the “cops”, the police, their “demonstrations” in their training sessions for the coming war. Additionally, his anxiety is revealed in the way he mistook the wigging of his little daughter for her dealing with him as if he had been a “figure of authority”. “It’s not my thing, never has been, never will be.” (Paley. G, as cited in Kinsella. et al., 2005, p. 834) By saying this, the man expressed his disapproval of the authority and, moreover, his disgust upon the authority. The anxiety, disapproval and disgust of the man implied the same feelings and attitude of the author. The old lady in the story is the embodiment of Paley herself. She was so worried and anxious about the safety of the American people in the nuclear age. Therefore, as the fathers hoisted their children on their shoulders and galloped away, the old woman cried once more and insisted “Be careful! Stop!” (Paley. G, as cited in Kinsella. et al., 2005, p. 834). She could feel dangers lying ahead such innocent people. And such dangers deeply rooted in the excessive boom of technology in the 1940s and 1950s when nuclear bombs were invented and the automobile industry thrived. The advancement of technology, along with its recognizable benefits, had stolen the life and the peace in the mind of every individual. As Paley wrote “I sit in the light and wonder how to make sure that they gallop safely home through the airy scary dreams of the scientists and the bulky dreams of automakers.” (Paley. G, as cited in Kinsella. et al., 2005, p. 834) What Paley made clear is that it was the innocent ordinary people who had to pay for the insensible dreams of the scientists and the automakers. For such dreams, the ordinary people, including the children had to sacrifice their normal leisure, that is to “sit down at their kitchen tables for a healthy snack…before going out into the new spring afternoon to play.” The metaphorical image of the marigolds planted by the old woman at the beginning and at the end of the story conveys the desire of every single American for a bright future, for peace and the longevity of the whole planet without the threat of nuclear war, where the marigolds can grow. In the war time, the children often suffer the most. This fact explains why literary works against wars usually deal with children and their anxiety. In another story named Snow by the Dominican-American fiction writer Julia Alvarez, we, again, come across a vivid illustration of the American anxiety in the 1960s. The story takes place in 1962. As a common knowledge, the beginning of this decade held one of the tensest periods in American history in particular and in the world history in general, which was known as the Cuban missile crisis. The crisis commenced in October 1962 when American spy flights over Cuba discovered the presence of Russian missile sites here. In association with an order for “naval blockage” to avoid missile shipment to Cuba, President John. F. Kenedy demanded the withdrawal of the missiles and launch sites of the Soviet Union. While waiting for the respond from Russia, the American and the world were put under pressure for fear of another destructive nuclear war. The same feelings are described concisely in the story as the young girl, the only and new immigrant in the class, was taught about snow and was explained by her teacher about the possibility of a nuclear war in the near future. After several air-raid drills, the fear of the little girl reached its climax when she saw real snow falling out of the window. As usual, the girl should have shouted excitedly “Snow! Snow!” However, to our surprise, she turned out to shriek “Bomb! Bomb!”, causing other girls to start crying and her teacher to jerk around with shock. Her reaction indicates a regular anxiety and fear lied deep in her mind, which led to her mistake of snowflakes for bombs. The fear did not only place in the girl but it was the common feeling of every American at the time. Only in this time could any ordinary person realize the value of life. As the girl discovered while she was watching the “fine powder dust” falling “Each flake was different…, like a person, irreplaceable and beautiful.” (as cited in Chin, 2002, p. 1032) The message Julia Alvarez wanted to convey is: let save every single life because each life is worth and each person is a unique beauty. The existence of one person is as natural as the existence of the snow that falls down American sky every winter. Throughout the time such respectful attitudes of Paley and Alvarez towards the value of life are always appreciated, especially in the contemporary age of technology, diseases and social evils, which has caused escalating personal anxiety in the United States. Such anxiety is depicted vividly in the continuous reminiscence of the narrator of the death of his friends in the essay The Bone Garden of Desire taking place in 2000 by Charles Bowden. The first person to leave him was Paul, a drug-addicted artist, who hung himself with a rope. The second person was Dick, a businessman, who died after several attempts to commit suicide due to depression. The third friend to die was Art, a navy officer, who died of cancer, the modern fatal disease which killed his last friend, Chris, a carpenter. It is undeniable that drug addiction, depression and cancer have been the causes of major anxiety in the modern time nowadays. According to statistics, in the year 2000, about 552,200 American people, which meant more than 1,500 people daily, died of cancer. (Gullota. T & Bloom. M, retrieved on Jan 06, 2009 from compared to over 500,000 Americans died from cancer in 2008. (retrieved on Feb 06, 2009 from ). Regarding depression, out of 29,350 people died by suicide in the U.S in the year 2000, 90 percent had a diagnosable disorder, commonly a depressive order. (Buchanan, 2007, retrieved on March 06, 2009 from In addition to cancer and depression, drug addiction damaged the health of 14.5 million people in 2000 and 16.6 million in 2001. (retrieved on Feb 6, 2009 from Although throughout the essay, Bowden expressed his optimism about life with its diverse of colors, sounds, smells and tastes, who can assure that he did not feel depressed and anxious? As a human beings, no one could keep himself from being unsettled when seeing his four dear friends, in turns, pass away. Bowden could not hide his sorrow and anxiety. “fuck…too many words choking me, clutching at my throat until they strangle any bad words I might say…I have sat now with something broken inside.” He took a strong drug but his body was still “ravaged by all the love and caring and the colors and forms and the body growing still in the new silence of the room as someone I knew and loved ceased breathing.” (Bowden, as cited in Norris & Atwan, 2001, p. 44). To his regret, all his friends had left him, giving up their chances to enjoy life more with him, a life which was full of colors, forms, sounds, smells and tastes, like various kinds of dishes Bowden described throughout the story. Even the garden where he scattered the bone and ashes of his friends was very beautiful and lively with variety of colors such as purple, yellow, pink of the walls; dark green, white and yellow of the notocactus and cactus, and all kinds of fragrance from the flowers and herbs together with the singing of the birds. It is a garden of desire, the desire to grow and enjoy life. Such desire was revealed in the way Bowden described the flower Selenicereus plerantus, which only opened in the darkness of the nights, the hottest nights of the year, “the black evening when the air is warmer than your body…”. The flower was an embodiment of desire since no one could be alone when it bloomed. “This flower touches your face, it kisses your ears, its tongue slides across your crotch…When it opens its white jaws, the petals span a foot and lust pours out into the night, a lust as heavy as syrup, and everything is coated by the carnality of this plant.” (Bowden, as cited in Norris & Atwan, 2001, p. 32). The flower was drawn like the body of a beautiful girl bristling with life, a life which is beautiful but is very short, like the flower, beautiful and full of lust but it only opens once a year around nine at night and closes before sunrise. Paul, Dick, Art and Christ understood the flower. When they were alive, they often came to the garden and watched the flower while drinking and enjoying the food its owner cooked. Even when his friends knew that they nearly died, they came here to watch the flower unfold and felt its lust or their own lust for life. Even when they died, their lust, their desire still glowed with life in the growth of the flowers, the cactus, the Madagascar palm tree and the herbs. Like the American people, despite their anxiety and sorrow in the troubled time, they still keep going with a desire for a better life. The evidence is, after many economic crisis, several wars, terrorist attacks and during this hard time of diseases and evils, the American, though with anxiety, still stand on their feet and hold their heads high to the world. Part III: Conclusion III.1. Conclusion In summary, short literary works, especially, short stories, memoirs and essays can tell us many things about the culture and society of a nation. Through the American short stories in association with memoir and essay of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, I have discovered prominent aspects of American culture and society of the time such as American informality, individualism, racial discrimination, modern American women, generation gap, and, moreover, about the anxious but optimistic American people facing the turbulent ages of the Cold War, the nuclear warfare and the modern time of cancer, depression, drug addiction and suicide. While informality and individualism as the lifestyle and value of the American, respectively, have not been changed, the other aspects such as racial discrimination, American women and generation gap have changed noticeably. Through the short literary works, I have witnessed not only the severe segregations and gradual improvement in the treatment of American society toward the colored people but also the more independent, freer and more modern American women in the new era with their practical definitions of love and marriage. Besides, I have acknowledged the wider gap between the young and the older generation in American society through time due to their greater barrier in values and interests. In addition to such cultural and social features of the nation, the short literary works reveal more about the economic as well as political situations of this powerful country, which contribute to my thorough understanding of the American culture and society. III.2. Implications for teaching For many people, learning about the art of using the language or, in other words, about the techniques employed to convey the ideas of the writer is the sole objective. However, I myself have more interest in finding out as much as I can about the cultural and social elements embeded in any piece of literary work. And I have done that. In my opinion, providing the students of English with chances to study literary works, especially those of short story genre along with guidance for their understanding of the cultural and social background of the works would be of great benefit and joy because when the students read short literary works and find out about aspects of the target culture and society, they would be able to memorize the linguistic elements much easier since they understand thoroughly the context in which the language is used and the story is written. When they understand about the language, they would have more interest in studying the foreign language as well as the literart works in that language. I am now teaching the in-service students of English at Haiphong Foreign Language Center. My students are those who spend the whole weekdays at their regular colleges, universities or companies. The time they spend studying English is very limited to the weekend. Therefore, the short literary works introduced to them must not be too complicated and abstract in the language but rather, they should reflect a variety of cultural and social aspects for the students to discuss together. Besides, the works introduced should be of the twentieth or twenty-first centuries because, firstly, these centuries have held the most important events of American culture and society and, secondly, the language as well as the cultural and social elements of the works would be more familiar with that of our time now. References Althen, G., Doran, R. A., & Szmania, J. S. (2003), American ways – A guide for foreigners in the United States, Intercultural Press Inc., Maine. American cultural history. Retrieved on December 12, 2008 from Beaty. J., Booth, A., Hunter, P. J., & Mays, J. K. (2002), The Norton introduction to literature, Norton & Company, New York. Brinkley, A. (2000), The unfinished nation: A concise history of the American people (Volume II from 1865), Mc GrawHill, New York. Buchanan, A. (2007) Responses to “Comedians for Suicide Prevention” retrieved on March 06, 2009 from Chabon, M. (ed.) & Kenison, K. (2005), The best American short stories 2005, Houghton Mifflin, New York. Chin, A.B. et al. (2002) Literature- The reader’s choice, Mc GrawHill, California. Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the United States (2002) Department of Health and Human Services, Vital Health and Statistics 23(22). Retrieved on Feb 17, 2009 from Employment Situation Summary. Retrieved on March 11, 2009 from Datesman, K. M., Crandall, J., & Kearny, N. E. (2005), American ways - An introduction to American culture - Third edition, Longman, New York. Davies, S. D. (2000), Short stories from the nineteenth century, Wordsworth Classics, Hertfordshire, Great Britain. Divorce rate - U.S.A. Retrieved on February 15, 2009 from Garcia, G. (2004), The new mainstream: How the multicultural consumer is transforming American business, Harper Collins, New York. Gordon, B. J., & Kuehner, K. (eds.) (1999), Fiction – An Introduction to the Short Story, Mc GrawHill, California. Graebner, W. & Swansinger, J. (eds) (1997), The American record: Images of the nation’s past since 1941, McGraw – Hill, New York Gullota, P. T & Bloom. M. (2003), Encyclopedia of Primary Prevention and Health Promotion. Retrieved on January 06, 2009 from Health / Medical: Cancer (2009), retrieved on February 06, 2009 from Inge, T. M., & Hall, D. (eds) (2002), American Popular Culture: Volume I , Greenwood, Oxford. Kammen, M. (1999), American culture, American tastes, social change and the 20th century, Basic Books. Keillor, G & Kenison, K. (eds.) (1998), The best American short stories 1998, Houghton Mifflin, New York. Kenison, K. (ed.) & Miller, S. (series ed) (2002) The best American short stories 2002, Houghton Mifflin, New York. Kinsella, K. et al. (2005), Timeless voices, timeless themes – The American experience Volume II, Prentice Hall, New Jersey. Moore, L. & Kenison, K. (eds) (2004), The best American short stories 2004, Houghton Mifflin, New York. Norris, K. & Atwan, R. (2001), The best American essays 2001, Houghton Mifflin, New York. Pergi, G. (1989), Generation of change – the Civil Rights movement in America, Topic magazine, U.S Department of States. Schorer, M. (1970), The literature of America: twentieth century, Mc GrawHill, New York. September 11 attacks. Retrieved March 10, 2009 from Stuart, J. (1940) Split cherry tree. Retrieved on November 9, 2008 from Turnbull, S & Holmes, R. (2009), Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Retrieved on Feb 4, 2009 from Wehmeier, S., Mckintosh, C., & Turnbull, J.(eds) (2005), Oxford advanced learner’s dictionary - seventh edition, OUP, Oxford. Yanni, D. R. (2004), Literature – Approaches to fiction, poetry and drama, McGraw-Hill, New York www.graphicmaps.com